


Responses to one crying in the wilderness

by faceofstone



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, dreams n stuff, in a vague future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-21 02:16:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17634119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: A storm is coming, fragments through the desert.





	Responses to one crying in the wilderness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Sank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/gifts).



Oh, Artie would not understand. Fact was, Janey-E did not understand either, headache getting worse as if a hundred horses had stampeded across the back of her head, and if the world was even a little fair, which it wasn’t, but it didn’t hurt to pretend, someone would have to help her carry that weight. Artie the secretary was a good listener, safe, and the only other person left in the office that late in the evening. A whole building bustling with people and all that was left when Janey-E needed them was just the two of them and the weight that had been building up inside Janey-E like an electric charge, crackling through the dark, empty corridors. So Janey-E sat on Artie's desk, crossed her legs next to an old-fashioned green desk lamp and spoke, her voice drowned by the dull thunder of hundreds of hooves.

 

She spoke of her hairdresser - the new girl must have pulled her hair, she bet she did, girl was a sweet thing but a real mess. A real mess who left her with a mess of a headache.

Now, this was not about the hairdresser and Janey-E knew it, but the hairdresser was real and clear on her mind. She knew she did not understand and she knew - although not in these words, not in any words - that one needed an entrance to brave a labyrinth. So she spoke of the magazine she'd found at the hairdresser's, hoping it could be the entrance she was looking for. Weird thing, that magazine, cheap print on cheap paper. The cover article connected women with the hunt, reclaimed, turned it sacred, as if the bullet sparked a connection with the dying deer, on the backdrop of dark woods, bearers of mysteries (Three paragraphs in and that settled it: moving to Vegas had been a gamble, but she had never been happier to be there, living in her bubble in the desert which was bright and dry and artificial and dead). A dissertation on anomalous moon eclipses replaced a missing columnist. Some sorry excuse for post-truth journalism collected Facebook anecdotes about crossroads, of all things. People died on crossroads. People made up stories about people dying on crossroads, at least. It felt like a thematic issue, like something was meant to connect those stories. Maybe it was, if the theme was bullshit.

 

Artie was not impressed. Well, Janey-E was not impressed, either. That was why she was complaining about it. She kept thinking back to those woods and that dying deer and she didn't like it one bit.

 

Mind you, there were some freaky types in the desert, too. Janey-E had met a woman the other day - “met” is too strong a word, she almost ran her over with her car, that is, as she drove back from Corn Creek. One moment this gal in her fifties, heavy makeup, dressed all in red veils like a performer and with a red wig on top, was trying to get on a horse in the middle of the road, the next she was thirty feet away among the rocks, she and her horse, standing like some mythological figure. The ones that judge people.

“I'm taming this fucking thing!” she'd shouted from the ridge, looking straight at Janey as the wind blew through her fake hair and through the strands of her dress. The horse bucked; the woman held on. “Mind yours.”

 

For some reason, that warning had reminded her of a dream she'd had and she had been uneasy ever since, like a cracked glass in the microwave. When you're dumb enough to let it crack in there the first time and you still put it back in to warm your milk over and over knowing that it's going to shatter. Did Artie know that feeling? Apparently, she did. Must be more common than Janey-E had thought. Had the dream come closer? Could a dream cross the desert and make it to Vegas? What happened then? Had Janey-E brought it there, nursing it in her car as she drove back from Corn Creek, asking herself if her horse was tame, if she had ever owned a horse, if she herself was tame?

What a load of nonsense. Janey-E Jones was a force of nature, brave and unstoppable, they could run the weather forecast just on her. Everybody knew that.

 

In the dream, anyway, she was in an old motel, the night was thick outside, and there was a woman in the hallway. She was desperate, her face warped like one of those Greek masks, and her anguish seemed to come from the fact that she couldn't pick a color for herself. The woman was drenched in purple when Janey saw her; she reached down, grabbed a bucket and splashed green paint on herself, crying and shaking her head as drops trickled down her hair and chin. She reached down again, same act, different bucket, orange paint, and still she was desperate, maybe in pain. But she never asked for help. Janey felt bad for her but didn't really feel like getting paint over her blouse and so she reached for her key and dove into the safety of her motel room. Then she woke up, maybe.

 

And this was her headache, give or take - missing a few grains carried by the wind, but that was the gist of it, Jones Rant over, they could both pack up and go home. Weird stuff, wouldn’t you say, Artie. A dream, coming closer. People could spend a fortune trying to psychoanalyze it all. Well, if she had a fortune she’d have better ways to spend it, but still. She had to wonder what it meant.

 

Artemis the secretary looked up from her screen. She took a slow, deliberate drag from her cigarette. The halo of smoke settling around her, coupled with the aseptic blue light of the computer’s monitor, made her look like a flickering presence, moon-touched, distant, but clinging to this world with teeth and painted claws - like a cross between a saint and a cabaret singer.

“It means you’re fucked,” she said. The lights went off.

 


End file.
